Fleece Nevada to you too

23Dec

This is just a quick little gibber, to indicate I’m alive. Anyone trying to reach me in any other place would be quickly deducing that I’m not. I haven’t been in ANY e-mail for days now, not really on Twitter, and Facebook hasn’t lost my interest because if I’m being perfectly frank, it never managed to capture it in the first place.

So. Hello. *waves*

I’m getting a lot of writing done. The problem is that other bits of life keep popping up just enough that I never quite get enough pages done so I can get online. Or, more commonly, I just get the pages done too late. yesterday, I only managed to write two pages in the afternoon. So, no internet. Then, late at night after I’d put everyone to bed — and desperately wanted to curl up myself — I sat and wrote another four pages. But by then, it was one in the morning and I wasn’t about to wake anyone up to let me online.

Last week, with final exams, I knew I had to stop writing for the week, so I went on the internet full-force. It was extremely educational, to go from a partial-running approach to the internet, to full-use for a week, and then back to partial-running. Interesting to see how my thoughts shift when I’m perpetually plugged in, and what happens around the house, and so forth.

Interesting to me, anyway. Probably terribly boring to anyone outside my head. which is why I’ll spare you the essay.

The little accomplishments of handwriting are SO glorious. When I reach the seam, halfway through a notebook, I love that. When I finish a notebook and write “Save Us: notebook 2” in a new blank one, I love that. When I exhaust a pen (or an ink cartridge,) I love that. There’s a physical aspect of accomplishment I never get tired of.

And it’s REALLY changed how I write, too. I’m not a natural novel-writer, and I definitely need this slower pace. (Except it’s not slower. With a computer, I might do 5,000 words in an afternoon rush and then nothing for two days. With pen and paper, I’m doing about 2,100 words every-single-day. Sometimes a little less, sometimes more, but it’s steady.) Anyway, with previous novel attempts, I write fast and keep bringing ideas in and flinging ideas out trying desperately to make it to the end of the book.

With Save Us, remarkably, I’ve brought new ideas in…and also brought in every single old idea I EVER had for the book. And all of them fit together seamlessly.

It’s not quite the book I thought I was setting out to write, but I really like the book it turns out to be.

…

I’m also making notes for a short-story sort of thing on the side. I’ve been puzzling over it for awhile and never quite found anything in it that made me want to get to it. Well, I still don’t know if I have, but I’m finding interesting bits. So I’ll keep doodling notes until it clicks and wants to be written.

(I’m doing likewise with a story idea about a shipwrecked sailor in the 18th Century, and I’m not sure WHERE that one’s going yet).

…

In January, Kristine and I will be doing a fun novel project, an exercise in handwriting I’m quite looking forward to. Now I just have to figure out a plot.

…

The other night, I discovered iTunes University, while sitting in my son’s room waiting for him to fall asleep. Smooth streaming lectures abound. I found myself listening to a woman with a magnificant Southern accent talking about the history of slavery, and slave ships and other things. And my brain did an interesting thing, and the last time it did this, it handed me God in the Machine. It suddenly racheted into high gear for about two minutes, and generated a novel and handed it to me.

It’ll be extremely long, and extremely detailed, and a huge amount of work. But I’m really interested. And done well, it’ll sort of feel like I’m novelizing a historical event…but I won’t be, I’ll just be making it up. I don’t know when I’m gonna write that one, but I made a page or two of notes after he’d gone to sleep, and it hasn’t lost its appeal yet.

This is turning into rather a long blog post, isn’t it?

well, it has to end here. My son’s down for a nap, which means I’m going to go over to my little desk, with my lamp. I’m going to put a blanket around my cold feet, and I’m going to write write write.

And hopefully survive the coming winter storm, which is supposed to dump twenty inches of snow in some places. (I hope it hits us. I’d love a major storm like that.)